Sat.May 09, 2015 - Fri.May 15, 2015

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10 Steps Up A Great Entrepreneur Legacy Continuum

Startup Professionals Musings

Every entrepreneur and business leader waits too long before really working on the legacy that he wants to leave to society and his family. They realize too late that they don’t really want to be remembered for how many hours they spent on airplanes, how many emails they produced, or even how much money they made for the business. If you disappeared today, what would your legacy show?

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Accidental VC: When, Exactly, Should Seed-Stage Startups Look for Office Space?

View from Seed

Accidental VC is a series of short posts written by me, Jay Acunzo. Though I never planned it, I somehow wound up working in VC as NextView’s VP of platform. As an operator, not an investor, I’m amazed at how many casual, throwaway comments that happen inside a VC’s office would be genuinely useful to entrepreneurs building their businesses. So this series is my attempt to share that knowledge beyond our walls … one overheard lesson at a time.

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Shrewd Ideas For Effective Web Design

YoungUpstarts

Your website may be your most effective tool to engage prospects and convert them to customers. An effective website, however, has to be tailored to the needs of your customer and your industry. Your web design has a huge impact on the number of prospects you convert to clients. How do customers use your website? To implement a plan for web design, you need to know how customers are using your website.

Web 142
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Where to Get Feedback on Your Business Pitch

Up and Running

Have you considered asking a child what they think of your business pitch? No, really. Check out #9. If you’re an entrepreneur looking for funding, you know how important—and involved—the pitching process can be. We’ve gone over the importance of your body language when giving your pitch, our favorite pitch deck resources, and the questions you may get asked, but don’t expect.

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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in

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Small Business and Startups: 8 Steps To a Successful Redesign

crowdSPRING Blog

There comes a time when a business looks hard at its website and lets out a groan of dismay. Your website is out-dated, out-moded, and out-competed and it doesn’t take a genius to see. Your own customers may have been telling you to get it together and, whether you are listening or not, it doesn’t diminish the truth that something must be done.

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Five Questions With: Sara Chipps, CEO of Jewelbots

Hunter Walker

You meet a lot of interesting folks on Twitter. Sara Chipps , cofounder/CEO of Jewelbots was one of them although most enjoyably, she reached out to me initially because she thought I had something to do with Homebrew, the Mac package manager and not Homebrew the venture fund. Once that was resolved it turned out we still had things in common and got together in NYC last year.

More Trending

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SAP Nationthe nightmare scenario

deal architect

When I wrote SAP Nation, I built several economic models on the size of the economy. In the book, I presented one which runs about $ 200 bn a year. The most expensive model showed close to $ 400 bn.

Software 290
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The Most Important Advice I Could Give You About Unicorns

Both Sides of the Table

*. Unicorns. The most overused word in the technology industry today. And they aren’t even f **g real. That is how absurd thing have gotten. No, I take that back. THIS is how absurd things have gotten: “I have to raise at a billion-dollar valuation” “Why? You don’t have the revenue or profit to support that valuation.” “But if I don’t I won’t be able to recruit the best people in the market.

Valuation 290
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VC Partner Sweet Spot: The Always-Sometimes-Never Rules for Pitching the Right Investor

View from Seed

For entrepreneurs setting out to raise a round of VC financing, with some diligent research, it’s reasonably straightforward to put together a list of target firms to pitch. Start with the firms of whatever city you’re in that have a history of investing in the stage and sector of your startup, then augment with additional firms outside your home geography which may have a strong particular fit with your company.

Partner 257
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How To Pick A Startup Model To Match Your Motivation

Startup Professionals Musings

Being an entrepreneur seems to be one of the most popular lifestyle aspirations these days. According to most definitions, anyone who starts a business is an entrepreneur , but most people don’t realize there are many startup types out there, and picking the wrong one can be just as disastrous as being stuck in a cubicle at work, or doing things with no interest and no skills.

Matching 214
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Measuring Simple

deal architect

I ran into a Gartner colleague at an airport last week. He’s more of an infrastructure analyst but asked me about SAP Nation. Within 5 minutes of listening to me he said “sounds like cloud computing will collapse that large.

Cloud 254
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Doubling Down On a Good Thing: The National Science Foundation’s I-Corps Lite

Steve Blank

I’ve known Edmund Pendleton from the University of Maryland as the Director of the D.C. National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps Node (a collaboration among the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, George Washington, and Johns Hopkins). But it wasn’t until seeing him lead the first I-Corps class at the National Institutes of Health that I realized Edmund could teach my class better than I can.

SBIR 203
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[Event][Asia] Next Bank Asia 2015

YoungUpstarts

This year’s instalment of banking and financial technology conference Next Bank Asia will be taking place on May 27-28 in Singapore with the theme of “Tracking the Digital Shift”, where participants will be engaged on topics surrounding disruptive technologies relevant to the Asian financial sector. o be held at Red Dot Design Museum, Next Bank Asia 2015 – first founded in 2011 – looks to bring together over 200 financial professionals, entrepreneurs, innovators,

Asia 165
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Plan Now To Reinvent Your Startup Before The Crisis

Startup Professionals Musings

You will be pivoting your business in your lifetime, whether you are a new startup, or a mature company like Motorola or IBM. You can count on it and plan for it, or you wait for the next survival crisis brought your way by this rapidly changing world. You can even give it a more elegant name, like “market-focused reinvention,” but it won’t be graceful if you don’t take the lead.

Startup 210
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NetSuites expanding ecosystem

deal architect

I usually look to spend time with vendor and customer executives at user conferences, but at SuiteWorld last week, I found myself spending time and learning more about NetSuite’s growing application and services ecosystem. The striking theme – while there.

Customer 200
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Episode 3 on SiriusXM Channel 111: Kathryn Gould, Mar Hershenson, Sophie Lebrecht

Steve Blank

My guests this week on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM Channel 111 were: Kathryn Gould co-founder of Foundation Capital. Mar Hershenson co-founder of the VC firm Pejman Mar Ventures. Sophie Lebrecht co-founder and CEO of Neon Labs. All three of my guests started their careers as scientists or engineers and ended up starting companies or venture capital firms.

Channel 201
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Start-up Tips: Identifying Intellectual Property, Simplified

YoungUpstarts

by Navarre Roy , Senior Associate with Selvam and Selvam. I’ve attended many IP seminars and conferences conducted specifically for businesses and they are generally always about Patents. If you have ever attended any one of these you’ll come away with feeling that Patents are important and an urge to dismiss anything related to trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets and designs.

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How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing.

Gust

This is a grim fairy tale about a mythical company and its mythical founder. While I concocted this story, I did so by drawing upon my sixteen years of experience as a venture capitalist, plus the fourteen years I spent before that as an entrepreneur. I’m going to use some pretty simple math and some pretty basic terms to create Read more >.

Founder 134
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The Word-Bird

deal architect

On a flight last week, the captain announced “our flight path will take us over Winslow, AZ”. That prompted the gentleman next to me to blurt out about flat-bed Fords.

Software 174
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What’s the right business model for your marketplace?

Version One Ventures

I recently came across a good story about pivoting and how hard it can be to find the right monetization model for your marketplace. Thumbtack is a platform that helps people find service professionals (photographers, painters, home contractors, movers, etc.). My friend (and Thumbtack CEO) Marco Zappacosta described how the company first tried transaction fees, then a subscription fee, before finally settling on a lead-based model. “I don’t know if it was because we were sort of dumb, or

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[Infographic] Business Etiquette Around The World

YoungUpstarts

We mentioned earlier that cultural understanding in business can be crucial, especially in this day and age of globalization where many enterprise owners are looking to increase their footprint in other markets. If you’re looking to expand your business overseas, or are travelling anytime soon to a different market where the cultural norms in business can be very different, it is crucial that you understand some of these potential pitfalls so you don’t make a faux pas.

UAE 160
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How I got 60 leads in 24 hours with just a landing page

The Next Web

Dmitry Dragilev runs a growth hacking consultancy helping startups grow and acquire customers through unconventional ways. He also runs a service called JustReachOut helping startups get featured in press. This blog first appeared on Kissmetrics. A few weeks ago a startup asked me to figure out the cheapest and most sustainable way for them to get 25 qualified leads to try their product.

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Founder CEOs vs professional CEOs – exit data

The Equity Kicker

At Forward Partners we want to back founders who will go all the way with their companies. That’s partly because we work closely with them and they become our friends, and partly because when a founder leaves a business it’s a horrible wrench from which it’s tough to recover, not least because the company has usually gone through an extended difficult period before the departure.

Founder 124
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Why Does Startup Pricing Vary by Location?

Gust

Entrepreneurs seem genuinely surprised to find that investors in Peoria or Little Rock are not willing to invest in startup companies at Silicon Valley prices. After all, they just read in TechCrunch that investors funded a company similar to theirs at an $8 million pre-money valuation! The valuation of startup companies shouldn’t be impacted by location, should they?

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Protecting And Recovering Your SMB’s Data – Six Tips

YoungUpstarts

By David Zimmerman, CEO of LC Technology International. Small and medium-sized businesses are typically inundated with data, despite their smaller size. Companies have to use data to extract as much value as possible from every customer interaction in order to be successful. Since it’s vitally important, data should be protected and properly managed.

Cloud 146
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9 notable young companies from the 500 Startups demo extravaganza

The Next Web

Pulsating with high-energy startup fever, the 10th 500 Startups Day in Mountain View yesterday afternoon offered the best of what 33 young companies in Batch 12 had on offer to enhance the way we live and work. While Demo Day is a private viewing for investors of 500 Startups’ newest accelerator startups, TNW got a peek at what the innovators of Silicon Valley and beyond have on their minds.

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Content Marketing for May

Rembrandt Communications

Boost online awareness fast – even if it’s last minute! Memorial Day and warmer weather are here. Have you prepared your promotions and content relevant to this time of year and your target market? If not, don’t worry. There is still some time to create a few content-pieces this month such as: 1. Blogs You […]. The post Content Marketing for May appeared first on Boost sales with BtoB Content Strategy, SEO and PR here.

Marketing 122
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How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing.

Gust

This is a grim fairy tale about a mythical company and its mythical founder. While I concocted this story, I did so by drawing upon my sixteen years of experience as a venture capitalist, plus the fourteen years I spent before that as an entrepreneur. I’m going to use some pretty simple math and some pretty basic terms to create Read more >. The post How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing. appeared first on The Gust Blog.

Founder 119
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[Review] Social Physics

YoungUpstarts

Why do ideas spread from person to person? How do we marry the worlds of social influence, big data, and behavioural economics? Enter ‘ Social Physics ‘, a concept coined by MIT Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland. Director of the Human Dynamics Laboratory, Pentland’s book “ Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread-The Lessons from a New Science ” proposes a new theory of human social interaction.

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Lean startup methodology is brilliant but confusing

The Equity Kicker

I just read two articles which beautifully illustrate the brilliance and challenges with the Lean Startup methodology. First up was the story of Blue River Technology an agriculture robotics company whose first product is called LettuceBot. They were part of Steve Blanks Launchpad class at Stanford and followed lean principles to great effect. Their first idea was an autonomous lawn mower.

Lean 118
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4 Reasons to Brand Your Business

Up and Running

Branding will make your business stand out. Think a brand is just for big businesses? Think again. Branding is critical for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Your brand is what the outside world thinks of you. That’s it. Although you can influence your brand through well-designed logos, hilarious ad campaigns, carefully crafted press releases, or super-friendly service, ultimately, your brand is what the outside world says it is.

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My Investment in Hungryroot: A Tasty Lesson in Products vs. Services

This is going to be BIG.

Brooklyn Bridge Ventures recently joined Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Crosslink Capital, and KarpReilly in Hungryroot 's $2mm seed round. The NYC based company makes ready-to-cook meals comprised of 100% organic, fresh-cut vegetable noodles paired with all-natural chef-designed sauces, toppings and optional pre-roasted proteins--and they're delicious. The food has become a staple of my diet, which wasn't the case after trying various food delivery services out on the market.

Product 109
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[Infographic] Can Celebrity Endorsements Influence Sales?

YoungUpstarts

The first celebrity endorsements supposedly dates back to the 1760s when Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of the Britain-based Wedgwood brand of pottery and chinaware, used endorsements from the Crown to build awareness of his brand. Later that trend was to become popular, with film stars in the 1940s posing for cigarette companies; Bob Hope pitched American Express in the late 1950s, sports icons like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods carried on – and expounded upon – the practice, often m

Sales 135
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Five practical tips for happiness

The Equity Kicker

Buy experiences instead of things – a US study found that 54% of people reported greater happiness from an experiential purchase vs 37% from a material purchase. Help others instead of yourself – a study of 600 Canadian and Ugandan students found that people spending on others reported more happiness than people spending on themselves. Buy many small pleasures rather than a few big ones – overall happiness is more strongly associated with the frequency of feeling happy than the

Forecast 114
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39 Things to Ask Yourself Before Starting a Restaurant

Up and Running

According to a study published in the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, approximately 60 percent of restaurants fail within their first year of business. If you are dreaming of becoming a restaurateur, you can increase your chances of success by honestly answering all of the questions proposed in this article, as well as checking off everything suggested below.

CPA 106
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Disrupting the Screen: Backing Tinkergarten to Get Kids Out to Play

This is going to be BIG.

A little more than a year ago, I got a note from Brian Fitzgerald, a Product Manager I met while I was at First Round. He was "taking time with family" to figure out what's next. Most people take that to mean that they'll stop spending as much time with their family and go on to work at another startup or be a founder themselves. Brian, on the other hand, doubled down on family and decided to work on the side project he started with his wife Meg.

Cofounder 104